MAYOR DE BLASIO on Looting and COVID-19 - June 3,, 2020

  Mayor Bill de Blasio: Well, good morning, everybody. I want to give you an update. The night before last, there were some real problems in the Bronx, in one part of the Bronx in particular. I was on the phone yesterday morning, speaking to the Borough President of the Bronx, Ruben Diaz, Jr. He was out in the street where the violence had occurred, and we were talking about, and he said, I at least want you to know even though we had a tough night, he said, I'm looking at something very positive. There's a lot of young people out here cleaning up. They're out here, because it's their community, they’re out here cleaning up the damage that was done by a very few, a very negative few who don't represent the Bronx, don't represent that neighborhood, don't represent this city. And he said they were cleaning up. He said, it's good to see young people care about their community and are doing something positive. So, I said, well, borough president, what organization are they with? Who organized? He said, let me find out, hold on a moment. And he reaches out, he's got a couple of young people there. He says, hey, excuse me, which organization are you from? And the kids say to him, we're not from any organization. We live here. And these young people, this is their neighborhood, and they are the future of the Bronx, and they are the future of New York City. There are so many good young people in this city who I want to tell, all of them, all the youth of New York City who care about your neighborhoods, care about this city, care about creating a better world, care about creating a more just world. Thank you. Thank you to these young people in the Bronx who wanted to create something positive, even in the midst of a crisis and a challenge, they wanted to move their neighborhood forward.

So, look, it's an example to us all. I went to the scene yesterday, myself later on the day. I met with store owners who had had their stores looted, and I heard their stories. And these are hardworking people. People who epitomizes the heart and soul of New York City. It's a primarily Latino community. Some people own stores who were immigrants. Some grew up in the area. But what they had in common was working people who had created something to serve their own community. And I talked to a lot of store owners in their stores, and I asked them what they were feeling. And they were, they were angry. They were frustrated. They needed help. And then every single one of them said, but we will rebuild, and we will come back, and we're not going anywhere. And I want you all to hear that, because that is the spirit of the Bronx. And that is the spirit of New York City. We're not going anywhere. I was in a neighborhood that went through such tough times, decades ago. And a lot of people I was with yesterday, elected officials, community leaders, store owners, everyday people in the community referenced how tough it had been in the Bronx a few decades ago, and yet, they stood their ground, and they brought the Bronx back and they will do it again. So, this is a setback, but it's not anything that will change the heart and soul of the people of the Bronx, and the people of this city.

Last night, we took a step forward in moving out of this difficult period we've had the last few days of moving to a better time. Just off the phone with Commissioner Shea and First Deputy Mayor Dean Fuleihan, and I want to thank both of them. We have all been talking constantly over these last six days. Both of them have shown tremendous leadership in the midst of this crisis. We went over the facts of last night. We saw a very, very different picture around New York City last night. We still have more work to do. Let me affirm that right up front, we saw a peaceful protest during the day. Yeah, some tense moments, undoubtedly, but overwhelmingly peaceful protest, and the NYPD respecting the peaceful protest. We saw a few incidents where people decided to do something illegal or violent around the protest, but that was rare. We saw some acts in different boroughs of people attempting to attack property, and the NYPD was positioned to address that rapidly. We'll get the exact details out as we get more information in the course of the day, but overwhelmingly, it was a very different reality in New York City last night. And the areas that had been particularly affected in Midtown Manhattan, and in part of the Bronx the night before, did not see that kind of activity in any meaningful number last night.

So, a step forward, and working closely with Commissioner Shea and his team, a series of strategies were employed yesterday. And those strategies I think by in large were effective. Those strategies were created in light of the evidence of what happened from 9:00 PM Sunday through Monday night. Again, things we had not seen previously, adjustments were made. NYPD really stepped back yesterday morning and said, okay, we're dealing with something different here. We have to defend differently. We have to address it differently, and they did. And I want to thank the commissioner and his team. I want to thank the men and women of the NYPD. They've been asked to do a lot the last few days. A lot of them are exhausted from working so hard, but they are going out there doing their job, protecting all of us, and showing a lot of restraint in the process, and that's what we expect. And I want to be clear. Everyone who puts on that uniform takes an oath, agrees to a higher calling, and agrees that restraint will be a part of their life. And keeping the peace means every sense of those words. That's what our officers and their commanders understand. So, we expect a lot of police officers. We expect them to live up to the highest standards of our society. And I saw a lot of good last night, and I want to see that continue. So, I emphasize that the standards, the rules we put in place last night, the curfew beginning at 8:00 PM, and going until 5:00 AM the next morning, that will be in place including Sunday night to 5:00 AM Monday morning. At that point, we hope to lift the curfew, move forward just as we're starting phase one of our restart. We all now need to turn our attention to the hugely important moment coming this Monday, June 8th, where we take phase one of the restart.

We've had conversations now for days, talking to folks at the MTA about how do we do this right. I had a very good conversation a few days ago with the head of the MTA, Pat Foye, constructive conversation. We've offered ideas to the MTA about what we think will make it work better, and we want to partner with the MTA to get done. So, yesterday I put out a vision of what I believed would help us come back safely in terms of our subways and buses, and I know the MTA also released a plan that showed, I think some very real progress. They are looking to do something we need to do. Get that service levels, get the frequency of the trains and buses up to where it would be during normal times. Because that's going to mean enough opportunity to get around, but also that when you get on a subway or bus much greater likelihood, it will not be crowded. I wanted to see hand sanitizer in all stations. They're doing that. I think that's great. I appreciate that. And they're going to do a great effort to get face coverings out. We've already pledged. We will provide a million face coverings. The city of New York will provide a million face coverings working with the MTA for free to New Yorkers. We want to make sure it's always easy to have that face covering on.

Now, there's more to be done though. There's more to be done because that alone won't get the job done. There has to be a presence on the platforms, personnel there to educate people, remind them, make sure to staying safe. We want to work with the MTA to get this done. So, here's some things that I'm proposing, I want to see the MTA take the next steps on. I want to see that everywhere you go, whether it is in a subway station and on the platform or on the train or on a bus, there are markings telling you exactly where to be. If you're waiting for in line to get a MetroCard from the machine, here's the marketing showing you where to stand in line, if there's a line. If you're on the platform, here's the marketing's telling you exactly where you can stand with enough distance from the person next to you. If you're on the subway, here's how many people should be on that train, on that car and the markings of where you should stand or sit the same with the buses. It is crucial that every other seat be blocked off so that it's clear, you'll never end up sitting right next to someone, there's at least a seat between people. I think it's clear that we need stated public capacity limits on buses and on trains, some as I understand that some subway cards are different from others in terms of capacity.

Now, as we are surging forward to Monday, June 8th, the other big piece of the equation is to protect our health and our safety with a strong test and trace plan. Now we've been talking about this for days, want to emphasize there's a hand off I keep talking about. Just as you start to reopen test and trace moves forward in a huge new effort, that means more and more New Yorkers being tested all the time, anyone test positive gets the help they need. If they need to be in a safely separated place, they need to be in a hotel, or if they need help isolating at home anyone needs to be quarantined has that support. This approach is the offense to keep pushing back this disease, just at a point where more and more people might come in contact with each other. So yesterday we announced we're now going to a stance where testing will be available. It's still not in the number we want it to be by any stretch of imagination, but it's going to keep growing. We're coming up now towards about 30,000 tests per day, I want us to get the 50,000 tests per day soon and keep growing— from then. But here's the bottom-line testing is free; we want every New Yorker to understand it. Your testing will provide to you for free, it will be easy, it will be quick. And now my message is all New Yorkers are welcome to come and get these tests, we've talked before about the different priorities, we've talked before about people who had preexisting conditions or we're older, we've talked about our first responders, our healthcare workers, people work in our nursing homes, all those folks that was crucial to focus on them first while we had a very limited supply of testing. Now we have a lot more, all New Yorkers are now welcomed to come forward— get tested for free, to find out where you can go to nyc.gov/CovidTest, or you can call 3-1-1. We now have over 180 sites and that will be growing rapidly, as we move forward.

Also, testing is combined with tracing someone tests positive, who are the people you've been in close contact with the last few days we're going to now reach out to them. We're going to get them tested if they need help, if they need to safely separate from other people, we'll do that. Now that army of tracers we've been talking about by the end of this week, there will be 2,500 tracers on duty – 2,500 – and we'll be adding more the following week, another 1,200. So, this number is growing all the time, I've said we are prepared to get to as many as five to 10,000 tracers, they're going— into duty right now. And here's the bottom line, if you test positive, you will get a call from a tracer. You need to take that call. I want to emphasize how important this is. If you test positive, you're going to get that call, take that call, tell them about your close contacts, that's how we protect people, that's how we protect your family, and every family. That call will come within about 24 hours of the time that you are tested 24 to 36 hours, crucial that we then follow through. We do that, right, I’ll make this point simple, you do that right, we do that right, we find everybody who needs support and they get support. And the disease has nowhere to go, if people who need to be safely separated from everyone else, and we do that effectively, then other people won't catch the disease and we contain it and we slowly constrain it more and more to the point that we can eradicate it eventually, that is the name of this game.

Let me talk to you about our thresholds, our indicators that we talk about each day to tell you where we are and how well you have done, and congratulations, because today you will see how well you have done. I've said that we have three and the first is a daily number of people admitted to hospitals for suspected COVID-19. We need to say under 200 people per day in all of New York City, city of over 8 million people. So as long as there's fewer than 200 going into the hospitals in a day, we think we're okay, we can make it work, we can protect people. Today the lowest number I've seen 39 patients only, 39, for all of New York City went into the hospital for this day, 39 only, that is a tremendous positive indicator.

Now we've said there's a threshold for a number to the daily number of people in our health and hospitals ICU, need to keep that under 375, it's taken a while to get that down. But now we are there 355 for the last few days we've been under that threshold, and we intend to stay under that threshold. And percentage of people who test at citywide for COVID-19 tested positive, again, got to stay under 15 percent to know that we can make sure that we can handle people's health and safety needs, again, best number we've seen so far, four percent, even with more and more testing, only  four percent testing positive. So, this is really, really a very, very powerful evidence of everything you've achieved, this has been a tough game plan, it's required a lot of discipline. People have stuck to the plan, and now you see the fruits of your labors.

MAYOR DE BLASIO on COVID-19 - May 29, 2020

  Mayor Bill de Blasio: Good morning, everybody. What's on everyone's mind all over this city is the restart of this city, taking the first step to getting us back to a better situation. And it's all been made possible by the extraordinary work all of you are doing every single day, and we're going to keep doing it, because that's how we get to that restart. We're talking about, as I said yesterday, 200,000 to 400,000 New Yorkers who can, and will be going back to work in a matter of weeks. We have to make sure it goes well, and that means supporting the businesses, not only listening to them, but helping them in very real ways. So, as I've been listening to business owners, big and small, what I hear from them is they need help making sense of all this. They need help getting off to that strong start. They know it's not going to be business as usual. They know we're in uncharted territory, but they're really clear that they need help to be able to start as well as they want to, and we want them to. So, we've got to make sure that business owners can keep their workplaces safe, that they can get their businesses going. 

So, let's talk about something that is absolutely necessary for every business to succeed and to be safe, and this environment we're in, in this uncharted territory. One thing is simple, straightforward, necessary, and that is face coverings. You need face coverings for all employees. You need face coverings for customers. Everyone understands that for business to work, people are going to have to get into some kind of proximity. We need those face coverings to make sure that everyone's safe, but we don't want businesses struggling to find them. So, what are we going to do? We're going to be providing face coverings for free for all businesses that need them. We'll start with 2 million face coverings that we're getting ready right now to deliver to businesses or have them pick up at sites around the city, whatever works better for them. And that work will be done by our Department of Consumer Worker Protection, our Department of Small Business Services, and our Department of Citywide Administrative Services. We'll put together a plan. We'll make it very public how you get these face coverings, or again, if businesses need them delivered, we'll deliver them. We want businesses to succeed, and having one less thing to worry about will make it a little easier, and it will make sure that health and safety is guaranteed. 

Now, we're hearing a lot from small businesses about other things they need and we're working on that too. And I’ll have more to say in the coming days. A lot of them talked about it's hard to find enough cleaning supplies, and cleaning supplies they can afford. There'll be effective, enough disinfectants. We're working on ways to make sure there is a supply available at a price that businesses can afford. We'll have more to say on that as well in the next few days.

So, the businesses have to restart. They have to restart strong. But now let's talk about working people. Let's talk about the backbone of New York City. The people who do the work. People want their livelihoods back, but they know they have to stay safe, and they especially, I hear it all the time, they want to protect their families. They want to make sure they go back to work, and restore their livelihoods, which their families need, that they don't inadvertently bring the disease home. So, we have to be there for working people, making sure that they have what they need to be safe. Now, this is going to involve, of course, working with the businesses, making sure they're following those rules, making sure the businesses have what they need to keep workers safe. But we want to hear the voices of working people, so we're going to have teams we send out to talk to employees directly, to talk to working people led by our department of consumer, and worker protection. We'll make sure there's signage of at workplaces. Workers have every right to be safe when they return to work. Workers need to know where to turn if there is a problem, and that's what the city will provide. A helping hand to working people to make sure that every business treats them right during this restart.

Anybody who either has a question, a concern, wants to know how to handle a situation at work or see something wrong or that they want to report, and want to see enforcement on, they can call that hotline. We'll announce the specifics next week. It'll be run by our Department of Consumer and Worker protection. We want to make sure that any working person who experiences a problem or a challenge knows where to turn to protect themselves, and their families, and their rights.

Okay. Now, talk about working people. This is part of what makes New York City so strong and so great, and our human services workforce, they've been heroes throughout this crisis, and we have to be there for them as well. So, we have so many different organizations. They work with our Administration for Children's Services, our Department of Health. They work with our Department of Social Services, our Department of Youth and Community Development. All of these homeless, excuse me, all of these nonprofit organizations, what kinds of things they do? They work on mental health, they work on homeless outreach, they work with young people, they do foster care – so many important, and crucial services this city needs. Well, we know that a lot of the people that do this work come from the communities that have been hardest hit by this pandemic. And we want to protect these folks that are not only members of the New York community, but they are people that make New York better, and stronger, and they protect other New Yorkers.

So, starting next week, we will have a testing initiative focused particularly on nonprofit staff. And we have a target of reaching 31,000 nonprofit staff. It's voluntary. People have a choice of if they want to participate, but we'll provide, we'll be providing up to 4,000 tests per day focused specifically on the nonprofit sector. We'll be doing it at Health and Hospitals, community sites. We'll give priority starting Monday. Another priority will be for nonprofit workers. So, anyone who's interested in getting one of those tests, and works in one of our nonprofits, you can go to nyc.gov/covidtest. And we want to make sure that if you need a test, you get a test. I’ll also say that there will be mobile testing sites set up focusing on these nonprofits starting June 15th. So, they'll go right to the workplaces of a lot of our nonprofit workers, and then the nonprofits themselves will start to provide testing in July. We'll provide all of the material they need, the PPE’s, the test kits, and they'll be able to do their own testing starting in July.

So, as I've gotten to know the cure violence movement, I've been so impressed by what it means not only for stopping violence, but what it means about communities creating their own leadership to solve their own problems. And the City of New York needs to support that because it's the right thing to do and it works. Well, right now, in the middle of this horrible challenge with the coronavirus, it's become clearer and clearer that a cure violence movement can be such an important part of fighting back this disease cure violence is the original concept, but it also has so much to say about community leaders and community members coming together to solve a range of problems. It's not that cure violence can share the virus, but cure violence can help to contain the disease, can help to push it back in neighborhoods by educating people, giving them the tools they need, helping people to hear what's the right thing to do from trusted community voices. So, our racial and include racial equity and inclusion task force, which has been set up inside the city government representing a whole range of city agencies has been working on the issue of what's the fullest use we can make of the cure violence movement. We have now 20 or so community partner organizations we'll be working with in this effort, and one example was on Monday when I went to Queensbridge houses, largest public housing development in New York City. Here is a place, again, biggest public housing development in the city and has had an extraordinary turnaround in terms of reducing violence and that shows us how much more could be achieved by this movement. Right now, we've got 150 cure violence organization workers out in communities, educating people, reminding them, giving them warnings about issues like social distancing, face coverings, giving out the face coverings for free. We're now going to more than triple that, we're adding 375 more cheer violence workers to this effort. The title they will be given is social distance enhancers, it's a great phrase, social distance enhancers. They'll be starting in the next week or so, building out through June, and this means 10 to 15 new staff at each site deep into communities and having a big impact through the summer into September. We're also going to do a great a public awareness campaign at the same time or partnering with an extraordinary organization called Art Not War. And they have done a really profound work on, many of you may have seen the work they did related to the people's climate March. 

We know that our seniors have been the most vulnerable in this crisis and we know that folks who are lower income and have had less access to healthcare because tragically healthcare has been about how much money you have, not about your humanity, that's the history of this country. The coronavirus has been a particular threat to you, and all of those realities come together with our seniors who live in public housing in NYCHA. We made a commitment that we were going to help a number of seniors in addition to their health needs, keeping their buildings clean, getting them face coverings, doing everything we could to protect them where they lived. We wanted to also enhance their life because a lot of them are feeling really isolated, we want to connect them to the world around them to make sure that during this crisis they were getting the help they needed. So, 10,000, 10,000 internet enabled tablets have been sent out to NYCHA seniors. 10,000 seniors will benefit because they will now be able to get the information they need, the support they need, the connection to their families delivered to over a hundred sites across the five boroughs and this is not just about that human connection in that way of fighting isolation. It's also about telemedicine, so important to making sure that our seniors get supported by clinicians without having to leave their home. The tablet is a lifesaver. Being able to see family and talk to them, that's really exciting. At least I know everybody is okay and they know I'm okay. Isn't that the most basic that every family wants to feel, I know it as a parent. All of us know it. The first thing you want to know is, is your family okay? And these tablets are helping our seniors to feel that comfort and move forward through this crisis.

There's other things happening and one of them is there's an election coming up. This is a big important election year and there's an election coming up in just a matter of weeks. The New York primary is happening at toward the end of June and today is the last day to register to vote for the New York primary. 

Finally, let's turn to the indicators and thresholds. So, number one, daily number of people admitted to hospitals for suspected COVID-19. So, remember, need that threshold to be under 200 patients admitted per day today, 61 patients, very good number. Now on the daily number of people in health and hospitals, ICU threshold needs to be under a hundred, excuse me, under 375 this today is really good news. Congratulations cause again this is all your hard work paying off, we needed to get below 375 as of today, 391 we are on the gateway to getting below that threshold and staying there. So, this is really fantastic news and as they say on the late-night advertisements, but wait, there's more. This is the best of all, I would say the percentage of people tested citywide who are positive for COVID-19 we have to stay under the 15 percent threshold. Everyday we've seen progress in recent weeks today, the lowest we've ever seen, 5 percent testing positive. And how profound that is when you think about the fact that testing is growing and growing and growing all the time, we're getting more and more New Yorkers tested and the percentage is going down, what a good sign this is. So, congratulations everyone, this is putting us well on the way to our goal of in the first half of June. Well done, New York City.

MAYOR DE BLASIO on COVID-19 - May 28, 2020

  Mayor Bill de Blasio: Good morning, everybody. We've asked you now over the last two months to shelter in place to practice social distancing, to wear face coverings. It's a lot, and it hasn't been easy. It hasn't been easy for a single day. Everyone's been making huge adjustments and I've talked to so many New Yorkers who have told me it's been a struggle, but despite that you've done it. You've done it to a remarkable degree, and because you've done it so well, we're now actually in a position to start talking about opening things up step by step, phase by phase. You've proven it through your actions that we are getting to the point very, very soon where we can take the first step to restart in phase one. So, you have earned it. Everybody's thinking about it, everybody's talking about it, now we can really get ready for the real work, the tangible work of taking that big first step. So, I want to talk to you today about what that's going to look like and how the city of New York's going to help people into this first phase and through this first phase. And then if we keep doing things right, well beyond that to more and more reopening, and more and more steps towards a better situation for all of us.

So, first of all, it's important to remind everyone, we say restart, we do not mean rushing back to something that we used to think of as normal. We do not mean flicking a switch and suddenly everything's where it was again, of course not. We have to make sure this virus is in check. We've come a long way. We're not going to blow it now. We've talked in recent days about our test, trace, and take care effort. That is central to this, because that is the offensive. That's how you make sure you're pushing back the disease on top of everything all New Yorkers have done. Now a systematic effort based on examples from around the world, but bigger than anything we've ever seen in the history of this city or this country, a systematic effort to trace every single case, follow through, make sure people have the help they need to separate safely. This is a game changer, because it's going to be done on a vast scale and it's going to keep constraining the disease. Doing that is part of how we restart smartly, and that test, trace, and take care initiative grows with every week ahead so it gets bigger and bigger, more and more impact reducing the spread of the disease.

But now, we should talk about what restart looks like on the ground and phase one, and I want to say, I really give a lot of credit to the state of New York for a clear articulation of what is, what are the industries that are part of phase one, and then how each industry should think about the practicalities of reopening. The fact is the State gives out this guidance, and anyone who hasn't seen it, I really want to encourage you to look at it. It's written in a very helpful, straightforward manner. And this is for all of the industries that will restart in phase one. As I said, based on what we know today, that will be in either the first or second week of June. Anyone looking for this information can go to the State website ny.gov/industries-reopening-phase. And it lays out very practically what you need to do if you're a business owner, what you need to do to actually make it come together.

First of all, they tell us what we need to know about which industries. Construction, all the construction that's not going on now, that restarts. Manufacturing restarts, wholesale work restarts, and retail that hasn't been in that essential category. So, we know what essential has been, it has been pharmacies, grocery stores, supermarkets, but now we're talking about a whole range of other retail clothing stores, office supply stores, furniture stores, you name it, but restricted to curbside pickup or in store pickup. That means not wandering the aisles shopping or lingering or comparing things, but you know, placing an order and coming and getting it. So, it's a quick transaction with limited contact between people.

So, what does it mean? We think a minimum of 200,000 New Yorkers will be coming back to work, a maximum of 400,000. That's quite a range. A lot of other parts of the country that would be their entire city. But here, because we're in the great unknown, we've never been through a pandemic like this. Certainly not in the last hundred years. We can only give you a range to begin, but we're going to know really soon what the truth is. But even if you say 200,000 people, that's a lot of employees coming back to work. So, we want to make sure it's done the right way, and we want to emphasize safety throughout.

So now, let's talk about how we make it work, business by business. Every business has a set of rules that fit it's reality, the nature of its business. And so, there are very specific, you know, nuts and bolts rules that people can follow and make sense of. Now, let's talk about some of them so you get a grounding of what it means, physical distance to begin with. The whole concept here is you have to keep that six-foot difference. Distance, I should say. Look, there may be moments where people have to come closer together. Sometimes it's just the nature of the job. Sometimes there's an immediate situation that people have to deal with, but the goal is as much as possible, keep people six feet apart. On top of that, keep the occupancy in each location. Think about a manufacturing plant, keep it to under 50 percent of its normal capacity so you have room for people to spread out. If there's tight spaces, elevators, an area around a cash register, keep it to one person at a time to the maximum extent possible. These are sort of common-sense rules, and that look, it's all about limiting contact, limiting the potential spread of the disease. Obviously, PPE’s, some companies need more advanced PPE’s, but the vast majority just need a simple face covering for their employers. Employees, I should say, but it's crucial that every company makes sure every employee has one. They need to provide them for free to their employees. They need to make sure they're wearing them. Hygiene, cleaning, regular cleaning of any shared surfaces. 

We're all going to learn together that, you know look, our business community is extraordinary in this city when you're talking a mom and pop store, bodega, right on up to the biggest businesses. One thing businesses do is they adapt, they create, they move with the times, they move with new conditions. That's the nature of business. Our small businesses know that better than anyone. So, I am convinced our business community will work it out, but now I think it's important that there are city government give them a helping hand. So, I want to talk about the ways that we're going to help, and also the ways that we have to make sure the rules are followed.

We're going to provide a lot of support, of course, all support we provide to businesses will be free and it will come from different city agencies for construction. The support will be primarily from our department of buildings for the other sectors, primarily from our small business services department and from our department of consumer and worker protection. So, what are we going to do? First, we're going to publish industry guides, we've got the guidance from the State that's really helpful. We're then going to add to it with simple, plain English examples of how people can do this work, how they can implement these rules. What you do in a clothing store is different than what you do on a construction site, we're going to try and make it plain and easy to use examples. We're going to get that out next week and provide it to every business, that's a part of phase one.

Second, we're going to start a business restart hotline and the restart hotline is going to be real human beings who know the rules and know how to facilitate and help businesses think through it, that starting next week as well. Any business that's trying to understand the rules can't quite figure out how to implement them is confused about how much is good enough. How many times a day do you have to clean? How do you create the right line for customers waiting to buy something? We will work with each and every business through this hotline. If there's something that they need resolved, it could maybe be done right over the phone, if we need to send out a city official to work with them to come up with a solution. For example, if they're trying to figure out how to do a line outside their store the right way and socially distanced and they're trying to figure out how much of the sidewalk they can take up, we'll work with them on that right there in person to sort it out. So, that hotline will start next week as well. In the meantime, as we've said, many times, any small business owner dealing with any problem we talked about those loan programs from the federal government or any other challenge of course can call 3-1-1 for help. We'll have a specific hotline though that'll be all about restart and how to navigate it.

Third, we're going to have a team of small business advocates and compliance advisors. So, we're going to send a team of city personnel out to businesses to check in to make sure they understand, to see what kind of help they need sorting out. So, we'll do some of over the phone, but we want the ability to immediately, if people need in-person help send teams of city officials to do that, to work that through. We want this to work, and so if someone needs help in the business, we want to see businesses succeed, we want them to start and start safely. If they need someone to come through and literally do a walk through with them, we'll send out help to do that.

And then finally, our sector councils have been amazing. These advisory groups, we're going to keep that going through this phase one, but through all the phases and beyond, they're going to be crucial to us understanding what's working, what's not, what needs to be adjusted. We're going to be able to explain, you know, what's going on with the health situation and figure out if we have to make any adjustments. They're also going to help us figure out the long-term efforts to help small businesses and larger businesses come back strong. Again, no lack of confidence in our business community that they can take the skills they've always relied on and bring them to bear here and come back strong. But they need to know the city is going to be with them every step of the way and we will be.

For other sectors, it will be our office of special enforcement and depending on the issue, sanitation department, department of consumer and worker protection, small business services, or it could rise up to something that involves the police department, Sheriff's office or the FDNY. So, what we will do is what we normally do, but modified for this crisis there'll be random inspections, there'll be agencies going out, checking on the businesses, looking for how things are going, but with a supportive attitude. I want to be clear about this. This is not gotcha, this is not something where we want to find a problem, we're not intending to give fines in the first instance. This is, hey, you got an issue here, let's fix this issue together and every employer who works with it, great, we will be supportive. If department buildings goes out to a construction site and workers are not wearing face coverings. They're going to say, let's get the face coverings on right now, and if they see it happening, there's no problem, we move on. If we don't see compliance, of course we reserve the right if we need to use fines, if we need to take even more aggressive actions we can. That's not what we want to do, we just want to solve problems. We just want to get these businesses up and running. We want to protect health and safety and we can do that together, the right way, that is absolutely the goal and I believe overwhelmingly that's going to be what will happen.

Okay, that's phase one. We're going to have a lot more to say on it, I assure you over the next days, because we're still not there yet. I believe all indicators suggest it'll be announced in the first or second week in June. All businesses are paying attention, they're hearing from the state, they're hearing from the city, they're seeing that this is all coming down to this, so they have time to get ready, but we're going to work very closely with them to make sure all the details get worked out. But some of them will only get worked out once businesses are actually on the ground and open and that's okay. We know we'll work it through in practice, that's phase one.

Now, at the same time as we're getting ready to begin phase one, we're already looking ahead to the phases that will come thereafter. And one of the things I'm hearing the most from business leaders about is they're paying a lot of attention to what will happen with our schools because that will say so much to them about obviously how the city is doing in general, but also if their employees can depend on sending their kids back to school in September and that will tell them a lot about their business planning as well. We are doing work every single day and I've said it really clearly, it's going to be a plan A to reopen school as normal, but with lots of other alternative plans, depending on what the healthcare situation is, there'll be a plan B, C, D I assure you, we are adamant though we want to work with the hope that we can get as close to a normal school reopening as possible for September 10th. We had a great conversation last night with our education advisory council. Now this involves a lot of key stakeholders in our public schools, folks in the department education the unions who represent the people who do the work of education parent organizations, but also beyond our public schools, religious schools, private and independent schools. Higher education is represented by some of the leaders of the great higher education institutions in this city. We're all talking together about what it's going to take and many, many organizations as well that provides support for our kids and our youth in a variety of ways. 

We know some people are particularly vulnerable and certainly every day, but particularly in a crisis, homeless New Yorkers are vulnerable. So, let's talk about what we have learned about this new effort in the subway system, the nightly cleaning and the impact it has had on our ability to serve the homeless. We now have three full weeks of data, three full weeks of evidence, and it's pretty striking. So, I want to give you an update since the beginning of the nighttime cleaning shutdowns, we have had 1700 individuals except help 1,700 encounters that led to a homeless person accepting help. 506 unique individuals, so that means not multiple times, but people who specifically took help, 506 unique individuals, accepted placement and shelter for some period of time, 281 are still in shelter right now. Now again, for all of us who have worked on these issues for a long time, 281 people have come off the street and just the last three weeks and staying off the street is a remarkable number and that is a beginning of something much bigger as we seek to end permanent street homelessness in this city. Very importantly, another 432 accepted hospital care to address medical situations, that's huge. So something in the midst of this crisis, in the midst of all the pain, all the challenges, something actually good has happened here where we're finding a new way to serve homeless New Yorkers and a lot of them are accepting the offer and hopefully are well on their way now to changing their lives and never living on the streets again.

Some kids deal with particularly tough circumstances, some kids have to deal with in their own homes, threats to them. And this is where our administration for children's services comes in and they do amazing work. And I want to highlight them today because they don't get enough attention, they don't get enough appreciation in any time. But I got to tell you how hard it has been for our ACS workers who go out there. Our child protective specialist, the folks who focus their lives on protecting the lives of kids and under very complex circumstances. Imagine what it takes to understand if a child is in danger in their own home and how to navigate that and how to protect that child. Very complex work, very trying, difficult work, and it's been made more difficult by the pandemic. People can't get out to homes the same way, and obviously home life has been disrupted and it's become very tense in many homes. We've got 3,000 child protective specialists at ACS, they do the Lord's work, they do amazing work. And thank you to all of you. Thank you to everyone at ACS because whatever your job is, ACS, it is about protecting and uplifting children. So, I want to thank everyone at the administration for children's services and a particular appreciation to those protective workers. This is an important time to take stock. May is national “Foster Care Month,” it's a time to thank all of the folks who work in foster care as well; the caseworkers and the folks who choose to be foster care parents, really crucial role in our society. Everyone in this, everyone in this area is unsung. We don't talk about the incredibly important role that foster parents play in the lives they have saved and turned around. We don't talk about the workers who make it possible. We should more often because it's an area that really, really matters to a lot of kids who found themselves in a tough circumstance, but there are adults who are there to pick them up and help them move their lives forward. So, thank you to all.

Okay, it is time today to look at our indicators and thresholds and number one, the daily number of people admitted to hospitals for suspected COVID- 19 - good number today – congratulations, New York City, we have to stay under 200 we’re at only 59 today. So, we're showing some real consistency there. That means what you're doing is working. Daily, number two, daily number of people in our Health + Hospitals ICUs - so we want to get under 375 or 421. We're getting closer. You see that trend line, we are getting closer every day. We're very confident we can get to where we need to be, but we've got some more work to do. And then indicator number three, the percentage of the people tested citywide positive for COVID-19 the threshold is 15 percent. That we stay below 15 percent we can make it work, we can protect lives, we can keep the city moving. Here is a number that I am really happy to see – happens to be my personal favorite number – number six, and we have never been that low in these reports. This is a very good day, six percent positive and we're doing more and more testing. I told you about 27,000 tests per day and growing constantly. Here's the interesting thing a lot of folks have asked as you do more testing, do you expect the numbers to go up or down? To date as we do more and more and more testing basically the numbers are going down. The more New Yorkers we're reaching, the better picture we're getting at what's happening in the city; the fewer people were finding tests positive as a percentage. That's a great sign for the future of the city. So, congratulations, really good news on that number – a very good day.

MAYOR DE BLASIO on COVID-19 - May 27, 2020

  Mayor Bill de Blasio: Well, good morning, everybody. This city continues to move forward because of all that you are doing. Again, I express my thanks every day for New Yorkers who are doing so much to fight back this disease, get us past this crisis and on to better times. We've talked a lot about the crucial new pieces of the equation. More and more testing, and our tracing program. Tracing contacts so we can contain the disease further. We've made some big strides the last few days on these fronts.

So, to review – look, a few days ago we wanted to get to 20,000 tests per day in New York City. That was something that for months alluded us. Being able to get to that basic level, 20,000 tests per day. We hit that number ahead of schedule. Now as of today, we are at 27,000 tests per day capacity and growing. We're well on our way to our goal of getting to at least 50,000 tests in the coming weeks, and then we're going to go and surpass that. The testing initiative now has over 180 sites that are either up and running or have been announced and are on the way. So, to get easier and easier for more and more New Yorkers to get testing, and that's going to help us move forward. And then tracing, as I said, the goal originally was to have a thousand contact tracers trained ready and on the field by June 1st. That number will now be 1,700 by June 1st, and then we'll grow from there. We are going to get to the level of 2,500 contact tracers in the first half of June. And then as I've said, we are ready to go to as many as five to 10,000, that's what will help us beat back this disease.

It is the ability to take care of people who are found to either be symptomatic or who test positive. It's so crucial to think of why we need to take care of folks in that situation because if we take care of them, we help them to get well. But of course, we also help them to not spread the disease. Now, any individual who test positive for the disease, anyone who's symptomatic, we've been telling you for months, there are things you have to do, because once you know you are symptomatic, once you know you test positive, you know there are things that you can do to make sure that you of course take care of yourself, but also that you don't spread the disease inadvertently. 

We want to take care of you, and all the people in your life, and that's where the take care point comes in. We can do a lot to help you because think about it, if you're able to safely separate and be at home, well, okay, then you still need help, right? You need to make sure you're getting medical attention. You need to be able to check in with medical personnel as you're progressing or if there's a problem to address it. You need food, you need all the basics to get to you. You might need prescriptions. How do you do all that? Well, we are setting up an apparatus that will allow us to support you. If you're at home and you can isolate properly at home, then this apparatus will support you safely separating at home. If you have to be in a hotel, we'll be able to help you as well. But just to make clear at home, we can account for the whole range of needs, meals, prescriptions and medication, physical health support, mental health support. People are going through so much, and we have to make sure that people have that support as well. So, there'll be regular contact with our test and trace team. There'll be phone calls in person visits when necessary. Text messages, you name it to stay close, stay connected. And who does all this work, who makes sure you have what you need, these are the folks we call resource navigators. They help you safely separate at home.

All of this is free. I'm going to say this many, many times today and the days and weeks to come. Every bit of this service is being provided for free, because this is how we help people. This is how we overcome this disease. If you end up knowing you need to separate from people at home but you need that support, the last thing you should have to worry about is how am I going to pay for it. We have brought on 15 community-based organizations as you see there on the screen. These organizations will actually hire the resource navigators from local communities. They're going to be familiar with all the neighborhoods of the city. They’re going to speak the languages of all the neighborhoods of the city, be able to connect with people. That initiative is starting right now. Those navigators will be on the ground next week starting their work as the contact tracing starts to grow, and ramping up so that we'll have plenty of capacity to reach anyone who needs that help.

So, if you have a loved one in your home, and they're older, and you want to protect them, you clearly might be better off going to one of the hotels to make sure there's no risk to the person you love. So, right now, we have 1,200 hotel rooms right ago. And again, I’m going to keep saying that key word free. We'll more than double that number to over 3000 rooms in the course of the next few months. But the bottom line is as many rooms as we need, we're going to have, so we're already planning on building that out, but here is the simplest rule in the world. Anyone who needs that hotel room to safely separate from the other people they live with, they will get that hotel room for free. This is how we protect people.  What does that mean? It means daily medical check-ins. It means meals, it means laundry. It means making sure you get, again, any medicines delivered that you need. It means mental health support as well as physical health support.

You talk about period of up to 14 days, it's not forever, but for that period of time we're going to make sure you have what you need. How do you get to a room? Well, obviously if you're identified as someone who has tested positive or is symptomatic through our test and trace initiative, they'll be able to, people involved in the contact tracing will be able to refer you to a hotel room, make all the components come together, get you the transportation you need, etcetera. But what if, for example, you go in to a doctor's office, and this the doctor who says, wait a minute, you know, you're symptomatic or the doctor tells you, they in fact did the test with you, come back and say the test is positive. It's important that you safely separate, its important you go to a hotel.  So, any health care provider all over the city, they can simply email CommCareCP@nychhc.org. This is a simple process through which any health care provider can make sure that you get the hotel room you need, if that's the best way to protect your loved ones and help you through this situation.

Let's say you don't have a doctor, well we’ve said many times, any New Yorker who's in the middle of an urgent situation needs to check on what's going on, wants to talk to a health care professional who doesn't have their own, you can always call 3-1-1 and get connected to a health care provider, to an Health + Hospitals clinician. But specifically if you know you're symptomatic already, if you're know you're symptomatic, you know in a living situation that you can't safely separate from others, you can call directly to our COVID hotline to get connected to the hotel program, and that number is 844-692-4692. When you call that number, if you say, look, here's my situation at home, here are my symptoms. A doctor will evaluate it with you, and they say, yup, that's time to go to hotel, then all of the wheels start in motion and we make sure you get the support you need. So, again, it's test, it’s trace, it’s take care, they all go together. So, we're getting members from 60 great organizations around the city. They really represented a wonderful cross section in New York City, they'll be meeting twice a week with our test-trace and take care of team and they'll be guides helping us think through how to keep making this the very best effort it can be. I can't emphasize enough how important this will be in beating back this disease cause remember the coronavirus thrives when there isn't that ability to find each and every person who needs help. But when every single day you find more and more people who need the help and get them the help they need and that happens faster and faster and better and better, that keeps constricting the spread of this disease. That's what has worked around the world and that's what's going to work here in New York City.

Okay. Now, as we continue to fight this disease, as we work towards this restart, let's of course always think about the horrible physical toll this disease has taken. The people we have lost, we think about them all the time. The people who are still suffering. The folks who we worry about, particularly because they're older and they have those preexisting conditions that we want to protect. The physical reality is always in the front of our minds, but as usual, the mental health reality often escapes our view, and this is something we should not allow to happen. We know the history of this country has been that somehow mental health has been too much of a taboo subject, but the mental health challenges of coronavirus had been profound. People have felt scared, anxious, confused, isolated, and they need more support than ever. And they need to talk about it and get it out and know that someone's listening and someone cares. This was abundantly clear to me yesterday I toured Queensbridge houses with some wonderful leaders of our cure violence movement, community activists who had done so much to keep neighborhoods safe. I talked to a lot of the residents of Queensbridge houses, largest public housing development in the city, in fact, in this country. People are carrying a weight, it's a very deep weight and it's a very real weight and we have to address it now and going forward. We've talked before, there's a lot to do this summer going into the fall, particularly for our school children. And this is a time to think about mental health in general and it is mental health awareness month. So, everybody this is a time to reflect, to think about how we support all those people, those health care heroes, those first responders, they'd been through a lot. How we make sure that mental health services are available in the places that are doing such important work. Our hospitals, our shelters, the places that serve young people, including a homeless youth, making sure that we're attending to that, not just the physical needs but the mental health needs as well. Mental health services that people need, mental health information they need. And it's a reminder this month and every month, if for any reason you need trained counselor to talk to 24/7 multiple languages and yes, for free, always for free call 888-NYC-WELL you are never alone in New York City. If you need mental support or someone in your life needs mental health support and you want to talk about how to get it to them, call 888-NYC-WELL.

We are now in a fiscal crisis here in this city. It is not the responsibility or fault of anyone in these five boroughs. We didn't ask for the coronavirus and we have spent so much time, energy, heart, soul and money fighting back the coronavirus and often alone without the help of our federal government, but New Yorkers have done it. I originally reported to you last month that between the current fiscal year and the one that begins July 1st we had $7.4 billion in projected loss revenue because of course the economy is not functioning the way it normally does and that's taken away all the money that we use to provide services to all of you. $7.4 billion, we now have a new estimate that we have just published and I'm very sorry to have to give you this news, but it's not shocking to me that things have gotten worse. We are now $9 billion in the hole between the current fiscal year and the one that begins July 1st. $9 billion and we project unfortunately beyond next fiscal year additional lost revenue that will hold us back further. There is literally no way that we can solve this problem without federal help or without having to make very, very painful choices that will affect the quality of life in this city. Our building provide basic services and how many people we're able to employ to support you in the middle of a pandemic in the middle of a moment where people need that public support and help more never in the middle of a moment where we were spending billions of dollars to protect your health and safety, to make sure you're fed, to make sure there's a roof over your head. This is the very time where we're not getting the help from the US, Senate or the President and we are getting to a point of really tough choices. We have to pass a budget by law by the end of June. So, we have about four weeks.

So, this week I asked the State of New York for help. I asked the State of New York to give us a fallback, to give us a safety net and that is borrowing authority. We need some capacity to borrow. After 9/11 in the middle of that crisis, Mayor Bloomberg went to Albany, asked the Legislature and the Governor to support New York City and provide borrowing authority – they did. New York City handled that borrowing authority smartly, wisely – got us through that crisis, got us to the point we were just a few months ago before this pandemic, a strong city, economically strong, providing so much support to our people, safest big city in America, highest number of people employed in the history of New York City. That's where we were in February – that recently – because this city has been smart in its stewardship of our resources, smart in the way we serve our people and grow our economy, we need to keep doing that. So, we've asked the state for that borrowing authority. By the way, the State has granted itself the very same borrowing authority. In April, the State granted itself $11 billion in borrowing authority. I've asked Albany for this borrowing authority so we can protect our people and I know a lot of people are stepping up in the city and saying that's the right thing to do; a lot of folks in our labor community have stepped forward and let leaders in Albany know how important it is to protect working people and to keep working people, working by having this authority as a last resort. So, this is a city unlike the city we knew decades ago; decades ago, New York City went through a lot of trouble and we learned a lot of valuable lessons. The city of today, a strong, careful, smart city when it comes to our finances; this is a city that can and must move forward, that can and must provide basic services. Let's keep fighting for that federal stimulus. That's the right way to do it, but in the meantime, let's get that borrowing authority from Albany to make sure we have that fall back and to make sure we can protect our people.

Now, let me turn to our daily indicators and thresholds and again I'm going to refer to the structure we're using now and this again is an example of the success that has been achieved in this city that we're talking now in terms of these thresholds. So, the first one is the daily number of people admitted to hospitals for suspected COVID-19 – remember, we want to see that beat under 200 individuals a day. That is a level that is sustainable if it's under 200 a day. Look at today's report, 55 for a city of 8.6 million people – only 55 people admitted to the hospital for suspected COVID-19. That's really good news. Now daily number of people in our Health + Hospital’s intensive care units - so this threshold, we want to keep that under 375. We have a little more work to do – we're at 431 patients today, but we're confident that number can continue to go down and we'll continue to go down. So, more work to do there, but on the right track. And so important, the percentage of people tested citywide who are positive for COVID-19, again staying under that 15 percent threshold is what we want to see. We are at 8 percent today and that is so good to see every day we're in single digits. So that progress is because of you; don't let up. Keep at it with the social distancing, shelter in place, wearing the face coverings. Let's be smart as we get ready for the next phase, let's do things the right way and that's what gets us to the next phase.

MAYOR DE BLASIO on COVID-19 - May 26, 2020

  Mayor Bill de Blasio: Good morning, everybody. I hope you all had a great Memorial Day weekend, a chance to relax a little, breakout of some of the challenges that we've been facing over these months. I hope you had a chance to spend time with your family, your friends, relax, reflect.  As we get ready for the next phase of this fight, I again offer my thanks to all of you, because New Yorkers have done so much, have been so exemplary. We've got a lot more to do, but you should be very, very proud of how far we've come and look from the beginning to this very day, the fight has come down to first and foremost, one thing, one piece of the puzzle that defines all possibilities. It's the same thing it's been from the beginning, it's testing. So, I want to talk to you now about where we're going with testing in the city of New York.

So, now we're at situation where we're able to get more and more people tested than ever before, and we want to get the word out. It's important for people to understand, because for months the message was there wasn't much testing, and that was the sad truth. But now there's more, and more every day. And I think a lot of folks weren't sure what to make of testing, and so I'm going to keep saying from now on, testing is simple, it's easy, it's quick, and it's free. And I want everyone to that, and to make sure everyone understands that. We're going to do a huge advertising campaign, TV, radio, digital community, newspapers, billboards, you name it. We're going to get the word out all over this city in multiple languages to let people know it is now time for more and more people to get tested. And with every passing day, every passing week, we're going to expand the amount of testing, and who can get tested. So, right now, we want to focus in addition to all the folks who originally were getting tested, we want to focus on people who have symptoms. We want to focus on people that are in close contact with someone who tested positive for the coronavirus, and folks who were in facilities like nursing homes, adult care facilities, shelters. That's where the focus is now, but it's going to continue to grow from there.

We've already talked about folks who are older, folks who have preexisting conditions, folks who live in the hardest hit neighborhoods, all of those New Yorkers we're encouraging already, now these new groups of New Yorkers. More and more, the messages go out there to get tested. It's good for you. It's good for everyone, and if you want to know where to go, you can call 3-1-1 or go online nyc.gov/covidtest.

Now, over the next five weeks, we will be opening more and more testing sites. So, first of all we'll be opening 12 new testing sites through our public health system, Health and Hospitals. This week, one will open in Queens. In the week of June 1st, five more will open in Queens and the Bronx. The week of June 8th, two more in Brooklyn. And then after June 15th, four more will open in the Bronx, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island. And we have a new partnership to announce today. We've had really wonderful examples of folks from the private sector stepping up. We had a great announcement a few days ago with City MD, now another private health care provider stepping forward and I'm very, very grateful. Advantage Care Physicians. Advantage Care is stepping up, joining the fight, and we are so thankful to them. Locations across all five boroughs. We're going to start with 16 more sites that will be opening on June 1st through Advantage Care. Now, appointments are encouraged, but if you walk in, that's okay too. If you have insurance, it can be charged to your insurance, if not, the test will be provided to you for free. So, thank you to everyone to Advantage Care. This is another great step forward, making testing easier, making it more and more available, and I'm going to keep saying that word free.

And if you want to make an appointment with Advantage Care, call 866-749-2660.

We're going to have over 180 sites available for testing New Yorkers by the end of June, and now we are already well above our testing capacity that we hope to hit by this point of 20,000 tests per day. That is growing all the time. By August 1st, our goal is to be at 50,000 tests per day, and we feel confident about our ability to get to that number. So, testing is what gives us the ability to know what's going on person by person, and in the whole city. And now, we're going to have something on a vast scale we didn't have before, which is tracing. Tracing allows us then to follow up on the contacts of everyone who has been tested, the close contacts, the people they had real connection to, and then make sure each of those folks gets tested and is followed up on, and anyone that needs isolation or quarantine gets it. So, this is a huge new piece of the puzzle. This is when we go on the offensive and we put into place something that really changes our whole fight against the coronavirus. This is a big muscular effort and the goal we had set was to have a thousand tracers available by June 1. As of today, I am pleased to say we have hired over 1,700 contact tracers, and they will be trained and an action by June 1. So, surpassing the original goal by quite a bit. 1,700 tracers will be on duty and during their good work by June 1st, just a few days from now.

Dr. Ted Long, Health + Hospitals: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. The test and trace core set out to hire a thousand tracers by June 1, and I'm proud to sit here today and tell you that as the mayor said, we already have 1,700 on our team that will be starting by June 1. Now, the test and trace corps believes that the best tracers are people from our communities who truly understand our communities. There's two different types of tracers. We have our case investigators and we have our monitors. The case investigators are the tracers that call people that have a positive coronavirus result, talk to them about it, make sure they're safe, and then trace or track down the contacts that they've been in with. The monitors then call those contacts, bring them in for tests, but also call everybody every day to make sure that people diagnosed with Corona virus are safe. Among our case investigators, more than 400 are from our hardest hit communities in New York City. That's almost half of them. They speak more than 40 languages. Among our monitors. More than 300 are from the hardest hit communities in New York City, almost half, and 40 percent of them speak Spanish. As we sit here today and are moving the program forward, we have an additional 100 tracers that are already doing the work in target ZIP codes in New York City right now.

Mayor: Thank you very much, Ted. Well done. Thank you to you and your whole team for this amazing effort. And everyone, look, this has been put together with lightning speed, literally a matter of weeks. So, this is an extraordinary effort. I'm so thankful to everyone in the test and trace core for the amazing job they're doing. So, it's so important that 700, over 700 of the tracers come from the very neighborhoods that have been hardest hit, and will understand what needs to be done to reach people, to communicate, people, to change this reality that we are facing. Annabel Palma is someone I have gotten to know very well over the years, worked closely with, we both served in the city council together.

We've talked about testing so many times testing the big constant word, the constant idea we talk about is testing. Well that's the kind of testing that tells you if you have a disease or not, but you know, there's been another test running through this whole crisis and that is the test of faith. In terms of day to day life, the ability to have the services that are so important to every faith tradition, that ability to go to a church or a mosque or a synagogue to be together, to pray together. So much of what has made up the life of this city and the strength of this city and right in the middle of this crisis, three of the most important holidays in three great faith traditions, Easter, Passover, Ramadan, and each faith tradition had to find a way to somehow make sense of these holidays without the benefit of all the people who are used to all the support that they give each other. It's been very, very hard, I have to put on the table a challenging reality. The idea of people coming back together and full services, large numbers of people congregating, it's not that time, that would endanger everyone. And we have to be smart, we're really making progress when it comes to this disease. But it is not time for large gatherings, it is not time to take the risk of going in the wrong direction. So, I want to thank all our partners, our faith leaders, we're going to keep communicating constantly. We're going to look for every opportunity to support your efforts to restart the right way. 

So, that is about something truly sacred, the faith communities in New York City. But now, I want to talk about something that may feel sacred to a lot of New Yorkers and that is, it's a much more mundane matter, it's a much more pedestrian matter. But when I say feel sacred, I mean it, it brings out a lot of feeling and a lot of emotion in New Yorkers and that is any time that alternate side parking is canceled. So, I'm happy to say that alternate side parking is suspended again, and we'll be through Sunday, June 7th. Last week – did a clean sweep of the whole city, catching up after weeks and weeks where we didn't have alternate side parking effect.rough this crisis as well. Remember, this city is not clean, it doesn't function. In fact, they've had to deal with more and more trash in a lot of places because people have been home, but they've been there keeping things together in a city and then have gone the extra mile playing a major role. For example, in our effort to set up feeding stations all over the city and making sure that people have enough to eat, our sanitation department has been there every step of the way. So, thanks to the men and women who do this great work at the New York City Sanitation Department. 

Okay. Every time we get together, we talk about where we stand in this crisis and on Friday talked about the indicators we had been using previously and now the new focus on the thresholds, which make a lot of sense now given the way things have evolved. So, what does it tell us, it tells us exactly where we stand in the open, transparent manner and it tells us when we're ready for restart. So, remember when the restart comes, it's going to be in phases by the State. Phase one is the first phase. We're taking the steps to be ready for phase one. We're getting the enforcement in place that will be needed from city agencies. When we talk about the sectors that will be reopening manufacturing, construction, wholesale, retail with certain restrictions like curbside pickup, we need to make sure the support is there, the protocols are there. What kind of precautions need to be in place? How do we monitor it? How do we inspect it? How do we make sure everyone's doing what they're supposed to be doing? We're also thinking about the fact that hundreds of thousands more people in coming back to work, well that means hundreds of more thousand people close together. Even with the social distancing restrictions, we're still concerned when you see a lot more people coming into circulation. Obviously, a lot of them will be taking subways and buses, that's a concern we're going to be working with the MTA on that. So, the work of preparing for the restart is going on every single day. But it's led again by the indicators, by the thresholds telling us if it's that time.

So, let's go over today's results. So, indicator one daily number of people admitted to hospitals for suspected COVID-19, so again that threshold we're looking at staying under 200. 200 is a level that our healthcare leadership leads— if the daily number coming in is under 200, we can handle that, we can keep people safe. Our hospital system can handle it today only 63 that's very good news, only 63 new patients, so that's well below the level we need to be at. Now daily number of people in our health, and hospitals ICU, that's a threshold of 375, Now that's a level of, we're below that level, we're certain we can handle anything that's thrown at us. A lot of work is going into making sure that we are redoubling our efforts to strengthen our ICUs. I know it's happening in our public hospitals; I know it's happening in our voluntary hospitals as well. We're going to be working with the state to make sure that everyone's ready on this front. So today we're want to get below 375 we're at 423 but again, that number has been moving in the right direction overwhelmingly, we're confident that it will come together. And then indicator three, percent of people tested citywide tested positive for COVID-19 – that threshold is 15 percent – and today's report seven percent, an excellent number and we've seen really, really great progress on that front, so a very good day. We're moving in the right direction steadily. We're getting ready for that restart in the first half of June we'll be watching the numbers and I'll do the disclaimer the numbers have to keep moving right direction. Stay in the right direction. That's what tells us when it's time, but very much like the direction we're moving in and it's all because of your hard work. So, I know you want to get to that restart that phase one, keep doing what you're doing so we can get there together.